


Redeeming Qualities

by Krasimer



Series: All Your Tragedies [9]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Credence Barebone Deserves Better, Credence Barebone Learning Magic, Credence Barebone Lives, Credence Barebone Needs a Hug, Credence is going to do a thing, Gen, Growing Up, Happy Credence Barebone, Healing, Obscurial Credence Barebone, Protective Credence Barebone, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 21:09:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13303278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: With a shake of his hand, Credence got to work on the rest of himself. Arms followed hands, his chest and stomach followed that. His entire torso was a bit difficult, like trying to push a sewing needle through thick layers of fabric, but he managed it eventually. His legs were just as gangly and long and awkward as he remembered, and he smiled at them when they flopped against the ground.He must have looked odd, like that – entirely human but for a head made of smoke.





	Redeeming Qualities

He doesn’t really remember how having fingers goes.

His life is centered in a small area in Britain, now, and he feels safe for the first time in his entire life. Newt Scamander and his vast oceans of patience have given him and Modesty things to look forward to. Credence feels, however worried he is, that now is the time.

One afternoon, with Modesty reading some books in preparation for school, Credence sneaks off to the forest. He is less likely to run into someone and harm them, he thinks. Strays carefully around any of the habitats of the creatures he knows Newt looks after. Finds an area with a break in the trees, a sunny clearing, and settles in to try and remember how being shaped like a person feels.

He has, after all, spent so long as a cloud of smoke.

Roiling anger and worried protectiveness and an inability to breathe when presented with the nightmares his own mind gives him.

But the talks he has with Mister Graves – the Real Mister Graves – have given him courage enough to be shaped like himself again. Credence takes what passes for a breath and focuses on his hands first. Fingers are hard to remember, too linked to shame and punishment, but he decided he needed them back first thing.

Credence steeled himself and closed off his awareness of anything other than his own self and the area immediately around him.

Fingers.

Good memories associated with his hands, with his entire body, are hard to find. Too many strikes of a belt across his palms, too many thin tree branches forming switches. Missus Barebone had been a cruel woman, he knows that now – just as he knows that he and the others had never deserved it.

So he thinks about Modesty.

The first time she had been brought home, she had been so small and scared. New places were so often terrifying to an orphan, after all. Her hands had been just as small, like a doll. Delicate and porcelain, fragile. Credence remembers wanting to protect her.

Remembers the first time they had taken her out with them, how her hand had slipped into his and she had tucked herself closer.

How she had sought safety in his shadow.

He remembers how frightened she had been and how fiercely he had wanted to keep her safe. That was probably how she had survived his attack on the Barebone house – She had been the only one he had ever wanted to keep safe. Chastity had taken on the cruel air of their ‘mother’ as a means of protecting herself from the wrath that would have followed if she had tried to defend.

Credence still wished he could have saved Chastity from himself.

Remembering Modesty’s little hand in his own, Credence took a deep breath and waited. The smoke that formed him shifted and, little by little, he felt a heaviness building at the end of what he had decided to call his arm.

He flexed the hand he had formed and inspected the nails.

The palm was missing the scars, and he frowned at that before watching them paint across the skin like they had never left.

Perhaps it was less forming a new limb and more recalling one?

With a shake of his hand, Credence got to work on the rest of himself. Arms followed hands, his chest and stomach followed that. His entire torso was a bit difficult, like trying to push a sewing needle through thick layers of fabric, but he managed it eventually. His legs were just as gangly and long and awkward as he remembered, and he smiled at them when they flopped against the ground.

He must have looked odd, like that – entirely human but for a head made of smoke.

It took a little longer to recreate his head.

Or rather, it took longer to recreate his face. The beak-like angle of his nose, the dark circles under his eyes, the point of his chin. The chip in one of his teeth from where a belt buckle had once flown wild and landed wrong.

Missus Barebone had told those who dared to ask that Credence had tripped going down the stairs one morning, poor dear, poor dear.

Credence slammed down on the anger that rose before it could consume him and undo his work.

He was safe now, she was gone.

When he finally formed them, his eyes felt sore. Like he had been awake all too long, exhaustion setting in. Forced bible readings had felt like that, when Barebone had demanded he stay awake into the night to memorize verses and psalms. The rest of him felt fine, awake and aware, but his eyes itched like he needed to sleep.

The wind tossed his hair around and Credence reached up to take the ends of it in his hand.

It must have grown, he supposed, even while he had left himself as smoke and nothingness. The length of it was down around his shoulders now, curled and sleek and softer than he ever remembered it being. Before, it had always been brittle and limp, hanging around his head in the bowl-cut that Barebone had forced upon him.

He felt different now, too.

Instead of the heavy numbness that had dogged him his entire life, Credence felt almost as if he could fly by simply taking a step. Was this what magic felt like? Newt had told him, once, that an Obscurus came about when one’s magic was shoved so forcefully away that it was practically detached.

In recalling his body, had he reattached what was as good as another limb?

It felt like breathing for the first time in ages, surfacing after drowning. Like the moment after the lightning struck and the air was clearing.

Credence lay back onto the grass of the clearing and lifted his hands to the sky, admiring the way the blue sky showed between the fingers of them. The wind seemed to weave in and around them and Credence laughed.

His voice felt rusted, like it had been an eternity since he had used it, but it felt _good._

**Author's Note:**

> Say it with me now: CREDENCE BAREBONE DESERVED BETTER.


End file.
